I am confused if the “no need to reply to this” is for: me?
Yes bought it, yes saw some humidity in one spot, yes estate agent lied, welcome to rural South France, been here numerous times before as well as friends and the reviews for the agent mention the same lying. I am not even going to start a legal battle. And the Notaire was on it too! Gosh I really don’t want to remember all the steps.
Honestly the dampness is not that bad. I have lived in Wales and especially Portugal where (for Portugal) 100 % of 60 houses I visited were like blue cheese caves, green and black paintings on walls, cold on your neck and forehead, rot stench when entering, even a 4th floor newly built flat!
rahhh, no, so much work! Got tendinitis! Cannot start to blast more wall. I think I remeved 95 % of cement now so the wall is indeed breathing. The humidity, if you look at the picture, is mainly between the floor tiles: darker lines where we see humidity, but there is no smell and hey, the dog loves it and that is exactly where she likes to lie down
When you say “bunging stuff on top of it” you mean: including replastering or putting a thick lime wash? Yes I SO want to just putting boards. Saying that, the room is really small for a living room and I will lose about 10x4 = 40 cm in total…
@Kimchi
Yes, it was intended for you which is why I started with your UserName
I didn’t want to appear to be interrogating you… just offering what I hoped might be a “useful thought…”
Sounds as if you have had a rather rocky ride, so far… best of luck in sorting things out.
You won’t see it so why do anything? Limewash won’t hurt but equally it doesn’t help (compared to no covering). And most of the enduits are cement based so will arguably excerbate the problem. Plus if you/someone has the money to plaster it down the line it’s more work then tidying it up.
Gap - you don’t need 10cm lambris is way lighter than plasterboard so you don’t need massive studs. But equally don’t fill that gap with insulation. And do not put plastic sheeting behind that’s another common bodge that makes it all worse.
5cm battens would work - lay them horizontally not vertically. But have the plastic air vents every 2 metres along the lower wall. Apart from anything else you can get to peer at what’s going on every few years and make sure the damps not returning
We had this with our cottage, stripped all the plaster of all the walls and re plastered from top to 1 meter from the bottom, coated the walls with Colloidal Silver to stop any mould and strapped with 15mm battens, then used 1 meter plastic lambris to cover with round air vents every so often.
After 6 years we have no mould, we left unglued strips which was easy as it is tongue and groove and check once a year to make sure no mould has come back, with so many cats and dogs in the house it’s easy to clean as well, no painting and wipe clean, I’m not a wood lambris snob so it looks good, easy maintenance and was cheap and easy to install with a Stanley knife and a staple gun/ silicone gun.
I love a good building story.
Buy house in France, great do’er upper and fantastic value for money, can’t believe no one else has snapped up this bargain.
Bit of renovation, few materials from local brico, might get a tradesman in for the odd job as plenty around who are desperate for work.
Worked out my budget, what can go wrong?
Some time later
No one told me I would need this, or that.
Why are tradesman so expensive?
Why is my budget overspend by 200% and counting?
I have been in the building industry 53 years and nothing has changed, get a diy chappie in, much cheaper and he knows just as much as the professionals and it all ends in tears.
Take note of @Shiba comment earlier.
Tradesman come with a guarantee, diy ers don’t.
So if I understand right: the lambris was only put the first 1 meter and the remainder, from 1 meter up to the ceiling, you re plastered everything? How many people worked on this project, and how long for?
almost the other way around…
our house was on the market for years and years…
everyone in the commune and surrounding area… they all checked it out and threw their hands up in horror… too much work… no way!!
When we (the mad English) arrived as the new Owners…
the next door neighbour mumbled about how he had missed out on a bargain which would have nicely doubled the size of his house…
the chap across the road mumbled about being “pipped at the post” by these ghastly foreigners…
Thankfully, everyone has since come round to the fact that they didn’t miss out on a bargain…
they managed to avoid the huge bills and hard work necessary to awaken this “sleeping beauty”
we are now impoverished but very happy… and the local trademen are very happy too as their pockets jingle nicely…
and it’s like the Forth Bridge… it is never actually finished… just ongoing…
You understand correctly, I did 8 rooms mostly the same apart from a bit of colour here and there, I did most of the work myself with the help of a couple of mates here and there, I haven’t had a time scale for the work as the farm is an ongoing project, I will never be a fantastic plasterer but it looks fine as I put a crepe/rough plaster effect paper on the top half which covered any imperfections and painted that.
Oooo thank you for the pictures! I see now! Someone earlier here was advising to put the lambris panels horizontally, I forgot to ask him why, I prefer it vertically, like you did.
In your case, they look like they are stuck on the wall: did you not leave some air gap? and if so, how is the air circulating, do you have air vents?
It is inspiring to hear of someone learning the job as they go and actually doing it right! Thank you.
Thats why I decided to sell up, 450+ years old and still ongoing as an attached piece never renovated nor would I have had the cash to do so and also most of the jobs done over the past years were coming round again, had no heart or money for it to be honest. New modern house, nothing to do except the garden but no rush as its going to be a labour of love when it cools down again, too hot and far too dry to go digging at moment.
I used a technique I have used before and I know works, the sheets are not the individual planks but 37cm wide, the thin battens on the wall have a 2.5cm gap every 37cm so there is a channel/airgap that goes up the middle of each panel, on top of the lambris I use a 2mm thick strip of plastic and then a L shape plastic trim that is 1mm wider than the batten and lambris and sits in this fixed with no nails glue, this creates an air channel along the whole length of the wall as the groves in the panel feed air in and out constantly, I like it better than round vents as it allows more airflow in.
It sounds complicated but isn’t one you have done it once., It’s easy.
